August has arrived! 😎 Whether you’ve got bored kids to entertain or a partner that just wants to do something new, this newsletter has plenty of arty options to consider.
Seeing art outside is a good way to start, so if you’ve never seen the Crystal Palace dinosaurs now is a great time to visit because they’ve just had a glow up and are looking pristine. It’s one of the many options in the Outdoor Sculpture Trails Guide but if you’d rather stay indoors then how about dinosaurs and air con! Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs has returned to Lightroom until 01 September.
What’s that? Dinosaurs aren’t your thing? 🦖 No worries… just start scrolling because there’s another 58 options reviewed below, ranging from independent galleries to brand new museums that are open, air conditioned and patiently waiting for you to visit.
⚠️ NOTE: please double check opening days/times before you go, especially for the commercial galleries as they probably have limited or appointment-only hours.
The month’s edition features a Fulham garden party that is a preview for something much, much bigger. And yes, it’s available to view by appointment!
These three new museums are all worth a visit. Here are the reviews.
A review of the worlds first, and only, Museum of Homelessness, and it’s current show: Criminal: An Untold History of Homelessness, Resistance and Survival.
London Art Roundup visited the world’s largest dedicated space for illustration.
You truly can ‘have it your way’ with the V&A’s brilliant Order an Object experience.
If you’re new or need a refresh: here’s an explanation of the ratings categories.
‼️ ← Last chance. Show closes this week!
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Alice Amati - Of Minor Importance (group show) (Fitzrovia) — I’m not a fan of still life but I can’t deny just how good these painters are, with extra credit going to Amedeo Polazzo and Andreas Zampella for their creative canvas twists. 🗓️ Until 15 Aug
Cristea Roberts - Pop Revisited (group show) (St. James’) — An impressive roll call of work by artists that shaped art’s Pop era but what I really enjoyed was the price list. £150k for a Lichtenstein print?! To be fair, the frame is included. 🗓️ Until 20 Aug
Emalin - Alvaro Barrington (Old Street) — The kind of large scale conceptual art installation that makes you immediately say “Ok, tell me more”. Alas, the handout just lists titles and materials, though Gen X will probably understand many of the references. 🗓️ Until 15 Aug
Gagosian - Alex Israel (Mayfair) — So simple. So brilliantly executed. And they look even better from across the street than when you’re standing right next to one and suddenly wonder how those half-tonne plexiglass fins are suspended from the ceiling. 🗓️ Until 05 Sep
Gagosian - Christo (Mayfair) — Unlike most posthumous Christo and Jean Claude shows (remembrances filled with conceptual models and planning archives) this is the world debut of a large-scale indoor installation originally conceived in 1968. It’s not their best, but as with all Christo works it’s better late than never. 🗓️ Until 21 Aug
Hayward Gallery - Anish Kapoor (Southbank) — I usually prefer to see art alone, but this is a show you need to experience amongst an awe-struck crowd. Watching people’s reactions and interactions with Kapoor’s mind-blowing black holes, infinite mirrors and icky gross bodily whatevertheyare’s is arguably the best part of this statement exhibition from an artist that continues to produce visually astounding work. 🗓️ Until 18 Oct (£ Ticketed)
Imperial War Museum - Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art (Lambeth North) — This temporary exhibition that shows “how the artists of the 1940s responded to the drama of London under attack” is perfectly paired with the works in the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries that does the same, except with a wider range of artists across a lot more wars. It’s a powerful and timely combo that hammers home but never glorifies the brutality of warfare. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
Robilant Gallery - Nor Here, Nor There (group show) (Mayfair) — It’s always mind blowing to see Yoan Capote seascapes made out of fishhooks, and master of light Vittorio Marella makes every one of his oil paintings look like a photo taken at golden hour. Sublime. 🗓️ Until 14 Aug
Saatchi Gallery - The Sun and the Moon (group show) (Chelsea) — From an Albrecht Dürher woodcut and some of the earliest aliens on film (courtesy George Méliès) all the way up to cutting edge contemporary interpretations so new you can still smell the paint, this is yet another museum-class exhibition that more than justifies the entry price in Saatchi’s quest to become a destination that rivals the big arts institutions. 🗓️ Until 08 Sep (£ Ticketed)
Serpentine Gallery North - David Hockney (Hyde Park) — They finally found a way to make his iPad work look great. Read my full review. 🗓️ Until 23 Aug
Somerset House - MC Escher (Strand / Temple) — He wasn’t the first to create imagery of impossible objects or pattens inspired by math, but arguably he did it best. Frequently amusing and often mind-boggling, Escher’s work continues to captivate whether it’s your first or fiftieth viewing. Frustratingly, someone thought the show would benefit from “immersive” experiences that look like they were thrown together at the last minute and relentlessly underwhelm. You can skip those. There’s more than enough original prints to enjoy. 🗓️ Until 06 Sep (£ ticketed)
Tate Modern - Tracey Emin (Southbank) — Some artists brighten your day with pretty pictures. Emin’s purpose is and always has been to reflect the trauma of humanity, specifically hers, right back at us with unflinching openness and brutal honesty. It’s often uncomfortable viewing, both thematically and in terms of the visual aesthetics (or lack thereof), but this retrospective makes it impossible to ignore the force that she is. 🗓️ Until 31 Aug (£ ticketed)
Wellcome Collection - The Coming of Age (Euston / Euston Sq) — Modern science is striving to make getting old almost as inevitable as death and taxes, but modern technology means it’s a lot more enjoyable than it used to be. From historical takes about the elderly to contemporary views on what being old means today, this highly engaging (and free!) exhibition about aging will make you think twice about however many years you have left. 🗓️ Until 29 Nov
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Annely Juda Fine Art - Vestiges (group show) (Mayfair) — A range of ghostly figurative (and one landscape painter) that ranges from ‘slightly out of focus’ all the way to ‘even when I squint so hard it hurts, I can’t make out what the image is supposed to be’. 🗓️ Until 28 Aug
Barbican Curve - In Other Worlds (Barbican) — In this beautiful and captivating experience the visuals entice long after you’ve lost interest trying to understand what any of it means, because everything requires donning headphones to listen to famous names read what mostly sounds like amateur fan-fiction. Spoiler alert: it’s a dystopian projection, based on current science and tech, about how humanity might be forced to respond to climate change. 🗓️ Until 06 Sep (£ ticketed)
Barbican Library - 1996: 30 Years On (Barbican) — If you lived through 1996 then you’ll understand why 96% of this memorabilia collection is Euros ⚽️ , Oasis 🎸 or Spice Girls 💃🏼 related. Still, there are walls full of trivia that will make you feel old, and plenty of shock and amusement to be had reading newspapers and magazine covers from the pre-woke lad/ladette era. 🗓️ Until 19 Sept (FREE)
Beers - Andrew Salgado (Farringdon) — The figurative artist’s idiosyncratic style has been focussed solely on flowers in this ‘departure’ show that will feel both familiar and refreshing to fans. 🗓️ Until 15 Aug
The Brown Collection - Hoi Polloi (Marylebone) — The venue itself is the single best thing, but the curated selection of historic and contemporary material, all either made or owned by artist Glenn Brown, draws attention to themes and creates fascinating dialogues you’d be hard pressed to identify in any one work alone. 🗓️ Until 08 Aug
Camden Art Centre (Finchley Road) — The main event is billed as a “comprehensive survey” of Donald Locke but frustratingly there’s very little change or variety to be seen in the 80 works spanning five decades. 🗓️ Until 30 Aug
Canada Gallery - Lucy Ash / Invisible Portraits (Trafalgar Sq.) — There’s some good work and some less skilled community contributions but this isn’t a show about quality, it’s about the power of art as a social response, as an act of memory, as a way to celebrate forgotten figures from LGBTIQ+ history, with a specific focus on those whose true selves remained hidden throughout their lifetime. 🗓️ Until 03 Oct
Courtauld Gallery - Barbara Hepworth (Strand / Temple) — Most of the drawings look like schematics for sculptures she never got to make. The ticket price is worth it just to see the ones she did. They’ll seduce you with their taut strings, sensual shapes, and rare use of colour. 🗓️ Until 06 Sep (£ ticketed)
‼️ Galerie Max Hetzler - Ida Ekblad (Mayfair) — The overall visual aesthetic of every single work is an assault on the eyes, but once I’d got real close and only focussed on small sections I found a lot of lovely little details and sumptuous textures to enjoy. 🗓️ Until 08 Aug
Guildhall Art Gallery - Jock McFadyen with Jem Finer (Bank / Moorgate) — The giant canvasses with accompanying ‘soundscape’ so effectively recreate the lonely and eerie feelings of waiting for a late night Tube that I wouldn’t have been surprised if a mouse had scampered by. Those who don’t want to be reminded of the dirty grime and eerie sounds of the underground might prefer Room 2, filled with McFadyen’s super widescreen East London scenes. 🗓️ Until 20 Sep
Hope 93 - Eme Omeh (Fitzrovia) — The show title, Fractured Inheritance, is apt for what occasionally seems like an overly ambitious series of strikingly chaotic works in which found objects and thick globs of paint augment multiple layers of imagery. Slow down, there’s a lot to digest. 🗓️ Until 31 Aug
Interval - Scarlet Topley and Ed Ruscha (Farringdon) — I will politely describe Topley’s works as quirky, and was frustrated the two Rucha prints had no particular reason for being included. (I asked. The answer was vague.) The mysterious shed/sound installation in the basement is compelling, though. 🗓️ Until 05 Sep
Ione & Mann - Jonathan Kelly (Mayfair) — The big, bold, custom-made canvasses remind me of game console iconography, while the designs inside had me meditating about mystical runes. Loud, brash and fun. 🗓️ Until 27 Aug
Larkin Durey - Marc Padeu (St. James’) — Rich, supersaturated colours depicting scenes with an almost Biblical staging, you could easily convince yourself you’re in a cathedral gazing at stained glass fables. 🗓️ Until 14 Aug
Lévy Gorvy Dayan - Thomas Houseago: Death’s Sacred Mirror (Mayfair) — Houseago’s work is inspired by Egyptian, Greek, and Aztec artefacts as well as more recent masters from the past two hundred years. Impressively, this show brings them all together into a cabinet of 56 curiosities that span millennia. 🗓️ Until 19 Sep
‼️ Miłość - Zach Toppin (Haggerston) — The intimate objects, personal mementos and banal practicalities featured in these still life paintings made me feel like I was snooping around the flat of a enigmatic neighbour who left me their keys to water their one single plant while they’re away. 🗓️ Until 08 Aug
Newport Street Gallery - Jack White (Vauxhall) — Yes, the guy from The White Stripes. His career began with upholstery and he’s been making outsider art since the 90s. You can feel the passion he put into both those categories because the work is vibrant, wacky, and a lot better than expected. We have Damien Hirst to thank for bringing it to London but, alas, I suspect we also have Damien Hirst to blame for multiple rooms of newer work that looks just like all the other generically slick, soulless bro-art Hirst often flogs in his gallery. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician Jack White never sold out. Alas, Jack White the visual artist… 🗓️ Until 13 Sep
‼️ Phillips - St. Ives: The Modern Coast (group show) (Mayfair) — The only sculptural work is a maquette of Winged Figure (the one on John Lewis) but if it’s painting and drawings from Hepworth and her contemporaries that you’re after then this show blows the cobwebs off the one at the Courtauld. 🗓️ Until 07 Aug
Piloto Pardo - Juan Martínez Macari (Barbican) — I expected the small flowers would be soothing but the big surprise was how the shoes, and specifically the Croc still life, made me feel so serene. 🗓️ Until 16 Aug
Pippy Houldsworth - I Dwell In Possibility (group show) (Mayfair) — An incredibly well curated show spanning generations, continents and cultures, where every piece seems to be simultaneously in conversation with at least two other works in the room. The one minor problem is that most of them just aren’t very good. 🗓️ Until 28 Aug
Royal Academy of Art - Summer Exhibition 2026 (Mayfair) — Coordinator Ryan Gander has made this one of the most fun Summer Exhibitions in recent memory, ensuring there’s plenty of stand-out works (mostly sculptural) that provide awe-filled and irreverent breaks from the onslaught of just-good-enough portraits, landscapes, abstracts and architectural models that flood the annual show. 🗓️ Until 23 Aug (£ Ticketed)
Royal Drawing School - Frank Bowling (Shoreditch) — Sketching and drawing are an integral foundation for all artists, and these early works and archival photos provide a fascinating insight into the approach and ongoing process of one of Britain’s greatest living abstract painters. 🗓️ Until 22 Aug
Sadie Coles (Mayfair) — I gave the Helen Marten video five minutes and then left in frustration because the poetry/prose VO seemed to have nothing to do with the on screen imagery. As for the grotesquely disproportioned females upstairs? They’re trademark John Currin style and like a car crash on the motorway, I couldn’t stop staring. 🗓️ Until 12 Sep
Sadie Coles - Ugo Rondinone (St. James’) — There’s nothing new to see here but I’m gonna continue to let myself be soothed by Rondinone’s sunrise/sunset works as long as he keeps cranking them out. 🗓️ Until 22 Aug
Serpentine Pavilion 2026 (Hyde Park) — The first pavilion in years that hasn’t felt inviting inside. Maybe it’s the portable plastic fans and afterthought chairs that look like an estate sale bargain? Meandering the undulating wall is why this one is fun, but not as much fun as the two nearby outdoor artworks: Jesus Rafael’s human car wash and Guiseppe Penone’s bronze kintsugi’d willow tree. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
Seventeen - Autopsy (group show) (Haggerston) — If you’ve ever got sucked into an online conspiracy theory rabbit hole then you’ll love this exhibition, which has strong ‘internet troll basement flat’ vibes, chocolate made with breast milk, and the actual model that features in The Alien Autopsy Scandal. 🗓️ Until 15 Aug
The Showroom - Harold Offeh (Edgware Road) — Performance art is tedious but I’m still recommending this show because (A) all the videos run simultaneously and are mostly short, and (B) Offeh’s works are incredibly amusing and highly satirical without dipping too many toes into the land of farce, a tricky balance in work that is loaded with social critique. 🗓️ Until 15 Aug
The Smallest Gallery in Soho - Vivien Reinert (Soho) — Inspired by the iconic designs and equally famous chaos of the Tube, and specifically referencing the lines that border Soho, the latest installation in the shop-window gallery is a colourfully enticing invitation to go Underground. 🗓️ Until Oct
Somerset House - Holy Pop! (Group show) (Strand / Temple) — Viewing the physical manifestation of someone else’s obsession can be an awkward, uncomfortable experience… unless you share their passion. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find a kindred spirit, or maybe you’ll just gawp at how deep down the hole some people go. 🗓️ Until 09 Aug (FREE)
Tate Britain - Hurvin Anderson (Pimlico) — A new artist for me that felt incredibly familiar. Partly due to the repetition throughout both his career and this show, but also, as I am theorising, his ‘ghostly’ washed out approach to landscapes and figurative has proven incredibly influential to the emerging generation of artists working today. 🗓️ Until 23 Aug (£ ticketed)
Tate Britain - James McNeill Whistler (Pimlico) — Yes, you’ll see Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.1 (aka Whistler’s Mother) but this retrospective of an influential and contentious artist (he famously sued critic John Ruskin after a bad review!) is a comprehensive overview that includes many drawings, some absolutely fantastic etching and dry point prints, and a recreation of The Peacock Room, the artist’s only surviving decorative interior, along with an audio clip that recreates/imagines the controversy it caused. 🗓️ Until 27 Sept (£ ticketed)
Tate Britain - Prunella Clough (Pimlico) — Room 18 has been converted into a mini shrine to Clough’s not quite landscape, not quite not abstract “urbscapes” along with a treasure trove of source inspiration from her archives including sketchbooks and photos. Ranging in age from 30-75 years old, many of these paintings could seamlessly slot into a contemporary exhibition. 🗓️ Until 08 Nov (FREE)
Tate Modern - Frida Khalo (Southbank) — If exhibitions had nutrition labels instead of trigger warnings this one would sheepishly state: Ingredients contain less than 30% actual Frida Khalo. But you’re still going to go, aren’t you? Of course you are. 🗓️ Until 02 Jan 2027 (£ Ticketed)
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‼️ Ginny on Frederick - Zayd Menk (Farringdon) — It’s an impressive and overwhelming statement about the mountains of mess that a tech-dependent society generates. But… so what? A pile of waste, no matter how elaborate, is still just that… even with the webcams that reflect your confusion right back’atcha. I love Menk’s installs, but I’m waiting for them to do or say something more than just remind me to take out the recycling bin. 🗓️ Until 07 Aug
‼️ LBF Contemporary - London Writes Itself (group show) (Fitzrovia)— I’m not sure I’d call it a highlights, but if you missed the Slade and/or RCA degree shows this selection of painters might scratch your itch for abstract canvas. 🗓️ Until 08 Aug
Night Café - Graham Gussin (Fitzrovia) — There’s lots of interesting details to be discovered amongst the 82 small works (mostly drawing/collage) but the overall presentation feels a bit like being shown a collection of mood boards and preparatory sketches for a finished project that you’re not allowed to see. 🗓️ Until 05 Sep
Saatchi Yates - Miramar Al Nayyar (St. James’) — Unless you plan to get high so you can go play the “Anus, Fabric or Flower?” guessing game I’m not sure why anyone would spend more than a few minutes viewing this highly repetitive show of sprayed acrylics. 🗓️ Until 17 Aug
Serpentine Gallery South - Cecily Brown (Hyde Park) — It’s annoyingly ironic to trek all the way into the middle of Hyde Park only to be forced to squint just to even see a semblance of what might be… a tree? Or a landscape? Or a river bank? Save your time and enjoy the real Mother Nature outside. 🗓️ Until 06 Sep
‼️ Sundaram Tagore - Miya Ando (St. James’) — Each of these ~100 aluminium cloud paintings is truly stunning, especially how the colour of the sky changes as you walk by. But as a show? Sooooo so boring, because all of the works are essentially identical. 🗓️ Until 08 Aug
White Cube - Georg Baselitz (Bermondsey) — It’s Baselitz’s last show and he’s got three really good paintings/themes to share. The problem is that like many OAPs he’s endlessly repeating his stories with very little variation. Imposing but repetitive. 🗓️ Until 30 Aug
White Cube - Tarwuk (St. James’) — I’m a big fan of the large, light-hearted figurative drawings tucked away in the lift alcove, but nothing about any of the rest of the dim, muted works or the abstract stage design made me even slightly curious to find out what was happening. 🗓️ Until 15 Aug
Three large group shows open this week:
SPLASH! Art Can Summer Exhibition @ Art Movement Gallery — 04-15 Aug
Materiality by BSMT @ Saatchi Gallery — 06 Aug - 12 Sept (FREE)
Make Do / Make Space @ Hypha Gallery South Bank — 07 Aug - 11 Sep
Want more options? The Art Listings Arms Race is an overview of eighteen platforms that provide London art show listings, plus more are mentioned in the comments.
Last week’s challenge is Glasshouse Contemporary, a picture framers / art gallery located at 91 Lower Clapton Rd, E5 0NP. Gallery director Johanna is the very friendly face you will see most often, but she’s also an artist so if she’s not around she’s probably painting in her studio in the back. The gallery has a great roster of artists they rotate in the front, but if you want to BYO they offer a framing service as well.
Check your inbox on Friday morning for another new entry entry! (That’s not a typo.)
Thanks for making it all the way to the end of my Newsletter. Did you like what you read? Was there something else you expected? Leave a comment and let me know!
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